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BCM Chess Book Reviews : August 2002Return to the BCM Review Index
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This is a collection
of John Nunns 250 favourite endgame studies of all time, in a large-format
book from Gambit. The first 50 or so pages have the study positions, six
to a page, and the rest of the book has the solutions, fully analysed
by Dr Nunn. The introduction is well worth a read, and Nunn explains how
a number of studies have succumbed to computer validation.
As always he goes in deep to bring you plenty
of explanatory material about endgame topics such as fortresses, zugzwang,
the opposition, etc. The general reader might find this work not so much
a challenge as a mental assault course, but the intrepid reader who is
prepared to work hard should find it a bracing experience, and their playing
strength will surely benefit from the effort.
The Grünfeld has the reputation of a being
a combative and dynamic defence to 1 d4, and has attracted a clientele
of the very highest class (Kasparov, Botvinnik, Alekhine and Fischer).
Davies book is very up-to-date, with the majority of the 73 annotated
games coming from the last two or three years. His annotations of Kasparov
games alone (eight with Black, one with White) probably justifies the
price of buying the book, which all Grünfeld aficionados will wish
to purchase.
This is a companion volume to Jim Plasketts
Can You Be a Tactical Chess Genius?, reviewed in the May
2002 BCM. We are all used to puzzle books for testing your tactics
but how to test positional understanding? The author had a much
tougher task than his predecessor, and many of the puzzles are less clear-cut.
But the tests are arguably more satisfying than tactical tests as they
require a little more thought.
This is a collection of
Alekhines game from his middle period, with the annotations in Informator
style, by Alekhine, his contemporaries and modern analysts. Presentation
is in chronological order, with crosstables and statistics also provided.
Well up to the high standards set by Chess Stars in their series of game
collections of great masters.
The latest
opening theory volume, published four times a year by New in Chess. It
includes NIC Forum, letters from readers, Sosonkos column, book
reviews by Glenn Flear, plus 36 NIC Surveys good value as always.
Letters from readers and contributors on
the Botvinnik Variation of the Slav, the Marshall Variation in the Petroff,
the King's Indian Four Pawns Attack, the Caro-Kann, the Keres Attack in
the Sicilian, the Nimzo Indian, the 'Franco-Polish Gambit' and the Sicilian
Scheveningen; Sosonko's Column; Book Reviews by Glenn Flear; 36 NIC Surveys
including Sicilian: Hungarian 4.Qd4, Sicilian Najdorf 6.Bc4 b5, Sicilian
Dragon 9.g4, Sicilian: English Attack 6.Be3, Sicilian Anti-Sveshnikov
System 3...e5, Sicilian Paulsen 5.c4, by Fogarasi, Sicilian 2 c3 d5, Pirc
Classical 4.Nf3, Kings Fianchetto: Gurgenidze 3...c6 4.f4 d5, French
Burn 4...de4, French Winawer 6...Qc7 7.Qg4 f6, French Tarrasch 3...Nf6,
Alekhine Modern 4...g6, Petroff Marshall 6...Bd6, Petroff Jaenisch 6...Nc6,
Ruy Lopez Berlin 3...Nf6, Ruy Lopez Marshall 8...d5, Ruy Lopez Chigorin
9...Na5, Scotch Classical 4...Bc5, Philidor 3...f5, Two Knights Traxler
Gambit 5.d4, Owens Defence 3.Nc3, Queens Gambit Declined Blackburne
Variation 5.Bf4, QGD Cambridge Springs Variation 7.cd5, Slav Krause 6.Ne5,
Nimzo-Indian/Queens Indian Hybrid 4.Nf3 b6, Bogo-Indian: 4.Bd2 Qe7,
Queens Indian Petrosian System 4.a3 c5, Grünfeld 5.Bg5 dc4,
KID Glek Variation 7...Na6, Benoni Modern Main Line 6.Nf3, Old Indian
Main Line 8.Rb1, Colle Variation 3.e3, English Anti-Grünfeld 7.h4,
Réti Capablanca Variation 3...Bg4.
OUT OF PRINT |
The Australian IM Cecil Purdy (1906-79) had a
successful career during which he became World Correspondence Champion,
but he also left a valuable legacy of game annotations and articles in
Australian periodicals. This book is the third in a series collecting
these writings: it contains 70 over-the-board games of Purdy himself,
and a further 30 by his son John, who won the Australian Championship
in 1955. The notes are concise but lucid, favouring common-sense explanations
over long variations. Though always didactic, Purdy wittily admits his
own failings, particularly with regard to clock-handling. He excels at
pinpointing the reasons for mistakes in analysis: commenting on Kotovs
oversight during a wonderful struggle with John Purdy he observes, Masters
dont mind giving away pieces, but they hate giving away threats.
There are plenty more such aphorisms, and the editor has compiled some
of them in a chapter called Purdyisms. These are interesting
but being out of context can sound unhelpfully dogmatic; more attractive
is the brief section of complete articles with titles like How to
Plan and Psychoanalyze your f-pawn. But the annotated
games form the meat of the book. Although the players are mostly unfamiliar
their chess is creative, and if you can ignore some heavy-handed editing,
reading Purdy is likely to help cultivate strategic understanding. Review
by James Vigus.
An expanded, updated and redesigned edition of the 1989 book
Test and Improve Your Chess, this book is mainly about positional
judgement, and goes into the study of openings, targeting the club player.
Alburt is an informative and knowledgeable author as befits an ex-Soviet
grandmaster, and he drives home his teaching with plenty of question and
answer. The layout is very friendly and helpful, and this would be a good
study aid for the serious, budding young player. Though the book is quite
fat, the print is big and it is not clear that you get that much book
for your whopping £22.50.
The
second volume of this new quarterly (which mainly featured games and problems
from the UK) has some interesting news of the contemporary chess scene,
including a blindfold exhibition given by Steinitz at the Oxford University
club in which Lord Randolph (i.e. father of Winston) Churchill took part.
An
excellent periodical edited by then-Belgian master George Koltanowski,
mainly in algebraic notation, covering all aspects of chess. There is
comprehensive coverage of the Folkestone Olympiad of June 1933, with the
British Empire team headed by Sultan Khan.
Another
reprint of Hoffers collected columns from The Field, always described
as the country gentlemans newspaper.
This CD-ROM has all the games from the first 40 volumes of Chess Informator
(i.e. the years 1966-1985) in PGN (Portable Game Notation) format, with
full annotations. The beauty of this is that you can load the file into
the chess analysis/database software of your software, or merge with your
existing database, without having to use any other proprietary software.
It also comes with a very good database program of its own, with a good
set of features to allow you to navigate around the data.
OUT OF PRINT |
This is a most unusual chess book. Most chess books do not have a colour
front cover of a pretty girl (the author) made up and modelling sophisticated
fashion clothes. It covers a number of subjects the career of Kosteniuk
up to her second place in the Womens World Championship, her family
background with input from her parents, a selection of exercises for beginners,
poems by the author and a selection of photographs of Kosteniuk with an
emphasis on the author meeting the great and the good (... and also
some famous chess people - ed).
It is interesting as an insight into the
family stresses and strains involved in developing a talented child in
modern day Russia. Kosteniuk herself comes over as a self-confident teenager
who handles publicity with a natural ease. The chess however is disappointing.
The educational material does not fit in very well and would be better
placed separately. Too many of the earlier games are juvenilia and are
not worthy of publication. Review by Ray Edwards.
Alexandra
Kosteniuk is all the rage at the moment: this edition of CBM has a full-length
video interview with the young Russian woman grandmaster. Also, 2,031
of the latest games and big-name annotations from the latest events (including
Linares 2002).
Vadim
Milov is a very strong and active grandmaster and provides some well annotated
games on 4 f3 and 4 a3 Nimzo-Indian lines. There are 7,000 games on the
database (up to May 2002) with the usual trimmings such as a training
database and a variation tree. Somewhere in there youll find Botvinnik-Capablanca,
AVRO 1938 with full comments by Kasparov. Thats one to enjoy.
This
CD-ROM contains 400,000 correspondence and email games from 1804 until
2002 including the correspondence chess world championships 1-6, correspondence
chess Olympiads 1-14, European correspondence championships 1-6, plus
national championships and many other events. It also features a correspondence
chess player encyclopaedia of about 41,000 names (for ChessBase 8). A
must for every player of correspondence chess! (upgrade
from Corr Database 2000 £34.95 - please return the CD-ROM).
This
CD-based course, with its pleasant user interface and good theoretical
section, helps to show that the endgame can be fun to study. There is
a theoretical section, with 700 games/lectures, plus 300 exercises for
the user to solve, plus 180 positions for playing against the built-in
chess playing program Crafty. Multiple user profiles are possible, with
independent ratings, making the software ideal for classroom use as well
as individual study.